This story is an important example of the Gothic tradition, where terror and horror reveal the psychological states of the characters and narrators. Here the narrator’s telling of the tale shows her own gradual loss of rationality and descent into madness. The husband John is the voice of reason and rationality, opposed to ‘horror and superstition’, but he is unable to understand his wife. Gilman’s story creates an uncertainty about his concern for his wife and her illness – does it in fact amount to oppression? The reader notes that what the narrator is forbidden to do is write, as if writing is the manifestation of her illness, which might lead to questions which occur in a number of Gothic texts about the repression of individuality and in particular the restriction of women’s roles. It is notable that the pattern on the wallpaper entraps and restricts the woman within and the narrator eventually identifies with her, saying ‘I’ve got out at last... you can’t put me back!’
Wider reading
Other short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman include
When I Was a Witch; Turned; Making a Change; If I Were a Man.
Compare with:
The Signalman by Charles Dickens
On Her Knees by Tim Winton
The Hollow of the Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe
The Lady in the Looking Glass by Virginia Woolf
Sandpiper by Adhaf Soueif
The American Nervousness
Of all the health issues receiving attention between 1870 and 1920, perhaps none was so prevalent as the increase in nervous diseases—ailments thought to result from weakness or failure of the nervous system, identified generally as "nervousness" or "nervous prostration" and labeled with technical terms such as "neurasthenia," "neuralgia," and "hysteria."
The predominant perception was that nervousness marked its sufferers as sensitive and refined, possessing superior, more highly evolved constitutions; Beard therefore claimed that the disease mainly struck the urban elite and professional classes. In fact, the diagnosis of nervousness would be made across divisions of class, race, and region, yet it was often articulated, understood, and treated differently according to the social position of the patient.
The medical establishment did, however, hold that nervous women fell ill because of excessive mental exertion or the pursuit of activities beyond their prescribed sphere. One of the best-known treatments proposed for such women was the "rest cure" popularized by the neurologist S. Weir Mitchell (1829–1914). While the cure had its proponents among women, many saw its encouragement of passivity and submissiveness to male authority, and its discouragement of intellectual stimulation, as punitive and retrograde.
SOURCE: Tuttle, Jennifer S. "Health and Medicine." American History Through Literature 1870-1920, edited by Tom Quirk and Gary Scharnhorst, vol. 2, Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006, pp. 443-449. Gale eBooks
"WallPaper": Various Articles | Lesson 1: "Wallpaper & new Woman" | Lesson 2: Writing Women |
Article: A Brief Analysis | Review | Close Reading Activity |
The Yellow Paper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman Analysis
This video unpacks the context, themes and literary methods in this short story first published by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
SOURCE: MissHannahLovesGrammar (2020), posted on Youtube, Duration:15:58 mins, URL: https://youtu.be/3O6_7bHvFOY
Short Film: The Haunted Woman (based on "The Yellow Wallpaper")
SOURCE: Walsh, Angeline (2020), Angeline Productions, posted on YouTube, Duration: 12:13 mins, URL: https://youtu.be/699jVKmrt90
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